01. longing: first word. trigger of the process. he screams, not from pain, but horror because he is still aware of what’s happening to him and knows what comes next.
02. rusted: sense of hopelessness kicks in. realization that he cannot escape the chains, knowing he will turn into a puppet, a monster.
03. seventeen:
tries to breathe, to stay focused, calm, to slow down the process, but knows it’s inevitable.
04. daybreak: first painful trigger. word that can be connected to the torture he is enduring or painful memory from the long lost past. tries with everything he has to hold onto his soul.
05. furnace:
the winter soldier is trying to come to the surface, we see last real struggle of bucky barnes to stay himself.
06. nine: takes five words to delete bucky barnes from existence, but the process is not over just yet. pain is gone, and so are memories, heart, soul of someone who was not so long ago kind and loyal. the winter soldier hasn’t shown his face yet, this is in between phase, where shell of a human being is full of rage. wrath is first emotion that leads to the winter soldier.
07. benign: slowly becomes blank piece of paper that is ready for the last words before turning into a weapon. doesn’t struggle any longer, hands are not trying to break free, he is where he belongs.
08. homecoming: body is giving its all not to become the other, more vindictive, vicious, dangerous person. there is no bucky, just one last piece of conscious human mind trying not to give into torture. first sighting of the winter soldier. ultimate trigger that pushes him to the surface.
09. one: next to last stage. no conscious mind left. shaking and trembling have stopped. breathing slows down. machine is born.
10. freight car: words attached to his death, symbolize death of a human being, friend, brother, loved one, and birth of the weapon. every emotion, memory, sense of being self aware is buried deep down and it will take a long time before any of those resurface again. breathes in new air. eyes become dead. the winter soldier is ready for orders.
Something that had already caught my attention when I first watched Captain America: Civil War, and that now receives my full love, is the scene at the end of the movie when Steve says “I can do this all day” once Tony tells him to surrender. While it is cool in itself that it mirrors skinny Steve from the 1940s, it is cooler to me for another reason.
As soon as Steve says “I can do this all day”, a heavily beaten Bucky lying on the floor, and devoid of his metal arm reaches for Tony’s leg, to stop him from hitting Steve. This mirrors the real Bucky, the guy who befriended Steve when both were children, the guy who always got Steve’s back, who didn’t care about Captain America but for the little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run from a fight.
To me that’s the crucial Bucky moment of the whole movie. That’s the moment when you know why Steve is fighting for Bucky. Inside of that broken, pretty dehumanised man, is still that kid from Brooklyn who couldn’t bare to see his best friend hurting.
The follow up of the “I can do this all day” scene in Captain America: the First Avenger is this:
They did go to the future. Yes, things changed and both of them changed, but at the same time they are still the same. The tiny, skinny, sickly kid who would never run from a fight, and his best friend, who would be with him till the end of the line.
Some time ago there was a post on my dashboard saying that the Captain America trilogy is beautifully symmetric, for Steve Rogers picked up the shield for Bucky and gave the shield up for Bucky, becoming Captain America and retiring from that position because of his friend. But to me that’s not it.
To me this trilogy is beautifully symmetric because of those two mirroring scenes I talked about above. Because Steve Rogers can expend his whole day, not to say his whole life, fighting for what he believes is right, and Bucky Barnes will always get his back, till the end of the line. Be it in the 1940s or the 21st century.
Captain America is Steve Rogers. A shield doesn’t make him. Being able to “do this all day” is what makes Captain America, be it in the past or in the future. From beginning to end Steve Rogers is not a perfect soldier, but a good man. At the same time, Bucky Barnes is not what Hydra made of him, what it made him do. He isn’t just a perfect soldier. Inside the perfect soldier “ready to comply” has always been trapped a good man.
Bucky says it quietly, one night when the sounds of Wakanda’s capital are far beneath their high-rise apartment and home feels closer and further away than it’s ever been. Steve is shirtless in the heat, because the sun only went down half an hour ago, and even Bucky has conceded to shedding his preferred layers down to just an undershirt. It’s been a quiet evening, long and treacle slow in the height of summer, and they’re both stretched out on the wooden floor beside the couch because it’s too hot for leather on skin.
Steve has been absently stroking his fingertips over Bucky’s scars, the livid points on his skin that never fully healed and faded to slick pink or silvery white at best. He’d leaned down to kiss the nearest, the vivid zigzag on Bucky’s inner bicep that always catches his eye, when Bucky shuddered and spoke up, voice low like he was releasing something long-held rather than voluntarily forming words.
“At Azzano. They pumped me full of… whatever it was. I was out of it, delirious, I don’t remember much of that part. But I came round, so they had to check if it worked.” He flexes his arm muscle slightly, like he’s got phantom sensations running over his nerves. Steve checks his expression, but the only thing on Bucky’s face is mild interest, if that. He’s just reciting facts. “They cut me deep enough to sever an artery, let me bleed out while they watched. But I healed. So they did it again, and again, just to make sure.”
He glances down at his arm for a fleeting moment before he’s avoiding the scar again, and Steve’s pretty sure it’s the first time he’s actually seen Bucky look at himself like that. It leaves his mouth dry, a strange, sad weight crushing the breath out of him in slow-motion.
“It was the first one that scarred. Fucking Zola. Couldn’t even stop being an egomaniac with a knife in his hand.” Bucky lets his head fall back to stare at the ceiling fan doing lazy circles above them, and it’s only when Steve hears the name that everything clicks with a sickening crunch.
The first time they beat him, Bucky forces himself not to cry. He’s had worse fighting. He had worse at Azzano. He cusses them out and sasses and gets a tooth knocked out for his trouble. It’s oddly satisfying, because he’ll have a war wound when Steve comes for him.
He’s had worse. That’s what he keeps telling himself. He’s had worse.
2
The second time they make him kill a man, Bucky starts to crack. He drops the gun and overbalances, not used to free movement without his arm. They catch him and then throw him to the ground anyway, but the boots in his ribs aren’t the worst. Steve hasn’t come yet.
The dead man is staring at him, empty-eyed. Bucky closes his eyes and bites into his cheeks so he doesn’t. Fucking. Cry.
3
The third time they rape him, Bucky can’t help himself. It hurts and it’s humiliating and the fat tears streak down his cheeks without his permission because he can’t. He wants to go home he wants his mother he wants Steve.
He can’t he can’t he can’t.
4
The fourth time they attach a prototype arm, Bucky stops resisting. He screams when they solder his nerves because he can’t help himself, but he doesn’t fight. He doesn’t cry. He takes the pain and thanks them on his knees when they give him a blanket in his cell.
Steve isn’t coming.
5
The fifth time they wipe him, the soldier comes out shiny and new. Damp with sweat and reborn through pain. Under control. In order.
vvinterdumpling.home.blog 